Rambles about stuff I like.

Other tv I like.

I’m always looking for good tv shows. Aside from the appalling amount of cartoons I watch, I also like a smattering of dramedies and sci-fi: Sherlock, Doctor Who, 30 Rock, Modern Family, Boardwalk Empire. I guess those are really the only ones that are ongoing that I follow.

Firefly, of course, was transcendent when it aired. (The movie was meh-ish, I thought. It was an insufficient way to wrap up a show which had just SO MUCH GODDAMN POTENTIAL!!) Augh, thinking about Firefly and what could’ve been…

House of Cards recently aired on Netflix, and I think I watched all 13 episodes over the span of two days. It was really good – but I fear I missed most of the subtext. (I’m notorious for not catching on to deeper meanings within books, plays, movies, shows, etc…) In House of Cards (HoC), Kevin Spacey plays a ruthless government functionary, and the show follows him and his various political machinations. There’s a lot of things that go unsaid, that is, there’s many times when one character says to another, “Of course, you realize what this means…” and they both look at each other, grimace, and nod slightly – I rarely get what they’re talking about. Anyhoo, there’s going to be a season 2 of HoC sometime, but when that’s released is anybody’s guess at this point. HoC was based on a BBC miniseries of the same name. I watched the first BBC series, but the production values weren’t as good, and I really like Kevin Spacey.

But I do like BBC miniseries. The Prisoner, with Patrick McGoohan, was revolutionary in it’s time. I watched those episodes back to back one week when I first started smoking weed. It was pretty awesome – although the technology is immediately outdated – and the whole atmosphere of the village was surreal and dream-like. The last episode blew my mind – it was just pure craziness. I thought the whole thing was amazing – and the recent remake pales in comparison.

Foyle’s War is another BBC show that I like. It’s run stopped at 7 series – and it’s similar to Sherlock, in that each episode is about 90 minutes (or the average length of a crappy comedy movie.) The show is all about a police detective named Foyle – but it’s set during World War 2. As far as TV Detective shows go, this is by far the best there’s ever been. (Although, I’ve never seen Columbo, so I may be wrong.)

The Ricky Gervais Show is yet another BBC show I like, but which ended after 3 series. It can hardly be called a show, though – it’s just a bit of animation overlaid onto a Ricky Gervais podcast. The highlight is, of course, Karl Pilkington and his wondrous sense of meaning. Pilkington is so bizarre in some of the things he says, it’s hard to decide whether he’s a moron or a weird sort of genius.

I watched the first two seasons of Breaking Bad – but then I had to stop watching. The show was just too intense for me – it’s not a show I could just put on and forget about. Each season is structured in such a way that an enormous sense of dread builds up, tension just gets continually ramped up, until that final episode when everything goes nuts. My heart just can’t take it. Although, as my brother says, “Uh…it’s make believe. It’s just a show. Take it easy. Christ.”